Show HN: Airtable, a real-time spreadsheet-database hybrid

This looks fantastic! I was drooling during the demo video - you've improved on so many things from the standard spreadsheet at once.

If I could make a request for the API: it's almost impossible to get a simple JSON serialization of a table in Google Spreadsheets. There are so many times where I just want to make a really simple MVP with a backend data source, but don't want a full-fledged Firebase database. If I could just stick my data in an Airtable sheet and point my Javascript to load it and create the page dynamically, that would be ideal.

Thanks very much! Re: API, yes absolutely. Our web and mobile apps already use an internal API that uses RESTful JSON routes for reading tables, updating rows, etc. If you want to chat more about it or discuss the specifics of what you need from the API, you can reach me directly at howie@airtable.com

At first I thought it was just a prettier, easier to use version of Excel. Then you showed me the filtering and I had an "Aha" moment. Excel is quick and easy, but it's hard to ask questions about your data. Databases make it easy to ask questions, but it's not quick and easy. You guys seem to have taken the best of both worlds, added in some super simple short-cuts, and there's a mobile app to boot. Kudos!

Here's one use case: i tried importing a 500+ row wine spreadsheet into it (it has columns like type, producer, name, vintage, rating, source etc).

I had to save the file as CSV and import it -- or at least that's what I thought, but filepicker seems to support picking from google drive. I don't know if it would have accepted a spreadsheet.

Your app seems sluggish to scroll compared to Google Docs at that size, and the record density seems low (I see 29 records per page vs 50 on Google Docs). This is using Chrome 38 on Linux.

The "link to another table" seems interesting, but my data came denormalized so I have a column with e.g. 10 different repeated values on 500 rows. Maybe it would be nice to automatically clean that up somehow. For example, I could Copy the column and have a some Paste (unique values only) option. Maybe the dialogue that comes up (suggesting to expand the spreadsheet) could even tell you about that. Or maybe there could be an option to convert a text field to a separated linked table.

I had some conditional formatting set up via Google Docs, which could be nice to have here; e.g. red wines have a red background in that wine type table.

I don't have a simple primary key -- it's really a composite of {wine producer, wine name, vintage}. The app didn't mind importing non-unique values into that first column. I don't know what the alternative might have been -- an auto-generated primary key?

Having said all of the above, I really like Google Docs and it will take some amazing features to make me switch to anything else. Multi-user planning and documentation via docs is great -- I have a shopping list everyone can update and I can see it change real time on the phone in the shop while someone is changing it from their desktop, and it's always up to date.